Beef-Steak Pie with a Twist

Even Mrs Beeton hints as much: “Beef-steak pies may be flavoured in various ways, with oysters and their liquor, mushrooms, minced onions, &c…”

With that sort of encouragement, what’s a girl to do?

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INGREDIENTS – 3 lbs. of rump-steak, seasoning to taste of salt, cayenne, and black pepper, crust, water, the yolk of an egg.

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I didn’t have 3lb of beef steak, but I did have a pound of mince waiting to be used.

The recipe calls for the meat to stew with the water and spices for 1 1/2 hours, but as it’s mid-week and a long work day, I didn’t have that much time to spare before stomachs needed to be fed. So I threw everything together in a fry pan (including some minced onion, as Mrs Beeton suggests) and cooked it all up within 20 minutes. I added some paprika, salt, pepper, soy sauce (in lieu of oyster sauce) and a little flour for thickening. As a final touch, I splashed in a hearty teaspoon of Mrs Beeton’s burnt onion syrup.

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To save some time, the short crust recipe was also my own (225 g flour, 100 g diced butter – rub butter into flour and add 3-4 tablespoons of water to form a kneadable dough) – but again, I have a feeling that Mrs Beeton wouldn’t have objected too much.

If you have everything to hand, this recipe (and my modified version) are both very easy to follow and prepare. It was clearly written as a recipe that could be adapted to circumstances and available ingredients.

I made a vegetarian version for myself with chickpeas (not my favourite thing, but it’s all I had in the store cupboard) while my boyfriend tucked into the meat version. He was well pleased with it – as were two of our cats, who (unfortunately) seem to have him wrapped around their little paws and managed to plead for the last few scraps on his plate. I haven’t seen them gobble anything so fast since we bought them a can of Whiskas as a treat!

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